The Blue Print

I have been pleased by the debate that has been generated over the last two weeks, following my call for the citizens of Cardiff to have an open and frank debate on whether the city should have an elected mayor.

The most important aspect of the debate for me, is that the people of Cardiff have their say on whether they think this is a good idea for the future direction of the capital. I am a representative politician for part of the city but I am also a resident. My view is that the city would benefit significantly from having an elected individual, fully mandated by voters from right across the city that would provide clear lines of accountability, demarcated responsibility and effective leadership so that it is clear to everyone in Cardiff “where the buck stops”.

I am not saying by any means that Cardiff ‘must have’ an elected mayor. The case still has to be made and the details scrutinised. However, I would say that the current system that governs the process of triggering a possible referendum is so perverse it is putting the citizens of Cardiff at a complete disadvantage compared to the citizens of England’s largest cities like Birmingham or Manchester. I intend to develop this argument further in an article to WalesHome next week.

I would like to thank Dan O’Neill – the Echo’s own ‘Kairdiff Kid’ – for his recent article (18^th August) examining the prospect of an elected mayor for Cardiff. I do have a few observations regarding the points he made.

I would firstly say that just because some of America’s mayors ended up in prison isn’t a reason to shut down the debate from the outset. The situation in America is not just indicative of some of the people they elect but of a system that lacks scrutiny and rigor. You can’t just extrapolate and assume the same here. On that basis you’d scrap local county councils because of previous misdemeanours such as those experienced in the Vale of Glamorgan or Blaenau Gwent, where council leaders and members ended up facing criminal charges.

Secondly, Dan ridicules the notion of belief and idealism. Surely one of the reasons why turnout at elections has been dropping and a general distrust of the political class has been increasing is because politicians are seen as clones without idealism and belief.

Finally, he claims that business leaders and school heads shouldn’t become elected officials because they wouldn’t have served any apprenticeship. Why should politics just be left to those we regard as politicians? Surely there are some very impressive leaders and visionaries who have led in the field of business, education and the arts. Politics and governance cannot just be left to political hacks.

I look forward to the widening of this debate in the weeks to come. Ultimately, I believe that Cardiffians should be talking about the sort of city we wish to live in and the type of governance and leadership which would provide it.

The recent selection of Nigel Howells by Cardiff Central Lib Dems for the Assembly elections is bad news, very bad news, for Rodney Berman who also applied for the job.

Berman is deeply damaged by this.

He failed to persuade his colleagues, many of them in his own Council cabinet, that he should be their candidate at the 2011 Assembly election. Having led Cardiff Council since 2004 one would have thought he was their obvious choice having had the experience of running the capital city. This lack of confidence from his own party casts doubt on his own future at the helm of the capital city’s local authority.

Secondly and perhaps most seriously is that we still have a Council leader who had decided by applying to be an Assembly candidate that he no longer wanted his present job after next year. I have always believed that Berman lacked the vision and ambition for the capital city, it’s now obvious that he also lacks the stomach for the top job.

As the AM for Cardiff North I have long believed that the Lib Dems are only interested in their Cardiff Central stronghold, and Berman’s wish to represent one part of the city is further indicative of their and his mindset. Perhaps they should be reminded that Cardiff is made up of four constituencies, not just the one.

Over the past few months I know that many people throughout Cardiff have called into question the direction our capital city is heading and whether the leadership is strong enough to give the vision and ambition for the capital of Wales. The decisions taken, for example, over the transport infrastructure and the resulting chaos on our roads, the proposals to reorganise school places and close popular schools demonstrates the poverty of leadership that the people of this great city are having to experience.

Running a local authority is not just about collecting bin bags, for Cardiff it means having a leadership which can see where our capital city needs to be in the next 10 to 20 years. We simply don’t have this.

I do not believe that he can continue in his role, but if he does I hope the Lib Dems will at least show some guts by replacing him.

Hopefully by the end of this evening I will have been re-selected as the Cardiff North Conservative candidate for the 2011 Assembly election, thankfully sitting members have a somewhat simpler process to go through!

I mention 2011 without specifying the date because no-one seems to know whether the poll will be in May or June.

We have spent a lot of time recently debating when the people of Wales should be expected to make some really big decisions, on the Assembly’s powers and also when a referendum on changing the voting system for electing the House of Commons should take place.

Now that March seems to be the likely month for the powers vote we had all assumed that it would be full steam ahead for the Assembly election to take place as expected on Thursday May 5, 2011, but of course that would be too simple. Now that May 5 is being talked up as the UK referendum on whether we should have AV to elect our MPs, May 5 is now being talked down as the Assembly elections day. As the Secretary of State can alter the date of the Assembly elections it is being suggested that June could be the date.

I have a few issues with this.

Firstly and most importantly the UK poll on AV should not force us to shift the Assembly election day. The people of this country are more than capable of answering a question on changing the voting whilst also deciding on who their AM should be. The two issues are also separate, unlike the referendum on more powers which is understandably (hopefully) not going to be on the same day.

Secondly if the three polls go ahead in this way then we could see voter fatigue by June. In fact 3 polls within 3 months could really annoy people who would rightly question the cost of completely separating the three events. We also run the risk of getting too caught up in the mechanics of when and how, instead of focusing our efforts on what these polls mean for the public.

This Saturday is an important day for Wales and the UK.

It is our chance to celebrate the bravery and sacrifice of the men and women who serve in our armed forces.

Armed Forces Day 2010 is is being celebrated in Cardiff so that the country will be able to honour the men and women who make up the Armed Forces community: from currently serving troops to Service families, and from veterans to recruits. The day is meant to be a celebration, in contrast with the more sombre Remembrance Sunday Parades and Armistice Day observances.

On Saturday civilian men and women will show our appreciation of those members of the armed forces that put their lives on the line every day for this country.

It will allow us the opportunity to give a heartfelt thanks for all those families who support fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters to serve their country on the frontline. It’s also an opportunity to show our solidarity with those families who have suffered losses in recent operations.

The families of our service men and women are the backbone of the British Armed Forces, it is right that we should remember them and their contribution in particular on this day.

Yesterday I published an article on WalesHome http://waleshome.org/2010/06/whatever-happened-to-the-idea-of-making-every-school-a-great-school/ which sought to address the issue of schools reorganisation in Cardiff and the way that Cardiff Council has addressed it.

I have been accused of backing the decision by the Education Minister who refused to support the Council’s plan for Canton. My accusers are right. On occasion I believe that opposition politicians should support the Government when those decisions are correct, and in this case the decision to protect standards was the right course of action. I also endorse the right of the Minister to point out when local authorities make fundamental errors in their plans.

The announcement yesterday by the Government that Cardiff Council had used the incorrect section of the 1998 School Standards and Framework Act in support of their planned reduction of Whitchurch High School raises a number of important points.

Firstly, these errors should not occur. Getting the relevant statutory provision wrong is admittedly somewhat embarrassing but also serious. It highlights the incredible strain that this council is facing in its attempts, however misguided, to reorganise school places. What this error does, yet again, is call into question the ability of the council to get this right and damages any confidence that might have existed in the community of Whitchurch that the council was able to do so.

Secondly, this latest error is part of a package of failures experienced by Cardiff Council during this process.

The original plans in Whitchurch relied on incorrect pupil projection data, information which they had actually supplied to the Welsh Assembly Government ahead of the publication of their proposals!

The council have also failed in adhering to the guidance on the maintaining of standards, which is one of the reasons why the decision in Canton was open to question and why the proposals for Whitchurch primary schools fall into this category.

It seems to me that Cardiff Council, and perhaps others, are now being caught out in the sloppy way that the schools reorganisation is being handled. More worringly for my constituency is the prospect that excellent and popular schools could be lost through a process which is now in question.

When the recession first bit in the autumn of 2008, one of the commitments that came out of the first all-Wales economic summit – convened to tackle the recession in a co-ordinate way – was for the Assembly Government and other public sector bodies to work more closely with businesses who had public sector procurement contracts, to not only pay them on time but to increase the amount of business it did with indigenous companies.

Increasing the amount of Welsh businesses tendering and winning public sector contracts is very important to the private sector because £5bn worth of goods and services are procured annually by the public sector; so this wasn’t an inconsequential commitment. It actually wasn’t a new commitment either as a key pledge in the One Wales document published a year earlier stated:

“We will introduce an all-Wales purchasing code of practice to support progressive increase in the amount of public purchasing sourced from Wales.”

So how has the Government fared in delivering this pledge?

In its annual report, which was debated in Plenary last November, the Government stated that it was ‘COA’ or to jargon bust ‘Completed and Ongoing Activity’. For me, this way of measuring a key performance indicator on government progress seemed very odd – how can you have something that has been completed but is ongoing at the same time? There were other such examples, like one of the commitments in the Economic Development section of One Wales which stated:

“Implement a labour market strategy with a long term goal of full employment at the rate of 80%”

Again this commitment was labelled as COA, which as we all know, is a complete nonsense.

Andrew Davies, the Finance Minister at the time said that the levels of Welsh businesses securing public sector procurement contracts was rising and that nearly half of that business was being won by Welsh-based companies. However, the reality as I found is very different.

I have gathered information under a Freedom of Information Act request regarding the levels of ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) procurement local authorities and health boards had awarded Welsh businesses in 2008-09. I was amazed by the results. For those health boards that responded, nearly £40m worth of procurement contracts had gone to less than 5% of Welsh businesses; and from the local authorities that responded, nearly £45m of contracts had gone to less than 5% of indigenous companies.

I challenged the Government again today on its record and both the First Minister and the Business Minister admitted there had been problems for Welsh business to properly engage with the public sector and win those ICT contracts. The Business Minister said that she has been exploring recently with the Director of CBI Wales, David Rosser, what the barriers to procurement were and how access could be improved.

She promised me a Government statement; I look forward to hearing what she has to say.

I am sure that the announcement by the First Minister that the Assembly Government favours October as the month for the referendum has nothing to do with the fact that we have a Conservative Secretary of State!

For months the Assembly and UK Government have been silent on the timing of the referendum.  If the previous government had been that interested in resolving the timing then Peter Hain could have advanced this issue at a greater pace instead of acting like an asthmatic ant with a heavy load of shopping (My apologies to Black Adder Goes Forth for misusing this phrase)!

In addition to meetings at the Wales Office it begs the question as to what Peter Hain was actually doing before he left office. Perhaps the new Secretary of State should search for a note left by her predecessor explaining why he couldn’t face responding to the request for the referendum, it seems to be the fashion these days!

Personally I have always favoured October, and in my view the new Secretary of State should do all she can to achieve this. If however it is impossible then St David’s Day is the obvious choice where we still leave 2 months until polling day for the Assembly elections.

This blog has been somewhat light on “postings” – well non existent actually – during the election period as my attention was elsewhere.

Now that the election is over and a new government is taking shape between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats it is worth taking stock at what we have witnessed this week.

Since the new political map of Britain was defined by the electorate on May 6 there was clearly going to be a lot of hard work to construct a government which could command the confidence of the House of Commons. I suppose this was the main sticking point for the Labour Liberal talks where a grand coalition would have required a sort of “Rainbow Plus” arrangement relying on the nationalist parties of Scotland and Wales, the Northern Ireland parties such as the SDLP, together with Lady Sylvia Herman and Caroline Lucas!

It simply wouldn’t have worked.

The attempt to put together a government using the skills and experience in both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties demonstrates a political maturity, a willingness to achieve stable government to take the difficult decisions in the national interest. Instead of ploughing on with a minority government David Cameron has played his hand exceptionally well, demonstrating not only his suitability to be our Prime Minister but also why he has the capacity to be a great Prime Minister.

I wish him, and my colleagues who are now occupying government departments, well as they get our country back on track.

Yesterday the proceedings of the Assembly chamber were affected because of strike action, not by those who had voted to exercise their legitimate right to take industrial action but by Labour & Plaid AMs who simply refused to turn up for work.

We were left with the rather odd picture of only the opposition parties attending the Senedd to discharge their responsibilities as elected members; where we debated the need for legislation to separate AMs from setting their salaries and allowances, and also having a full debate on the Labour Plaid government. For us it was business as usual.

I have no problem with officials venting their anger at the actions of the UK government and I fully understand their concerns about their employment conditions. My problem is with the actions of leftist AMs who behave as though they’re an integral part of the dispute, they’re not. I accept that there are occasions when members might be absent, that’s the same for any profession. But to use the strike as an opportunity for a duvet day is utterly ridiculous.

This morning the Older Persons’ Commissioner Ruth Marks has announced her first major review, pledging to tackle the indignities suffered by older people whilst in hospital.

Having served for 6 years from 2003 as my party’s Health & Social Services Spokesman I know how needed this inquiry is, I encountered many people whose personal experiences of hospital had been a dismal one where nursing staff had failed to ensure that patients were treated with dignity. Sadly my own personal experience of family members upheld what I had found throughout Wales.

Before my re-election to the Assembly in 2007 my grandfather was admitted to the University Hospital of Wales with a suspected bleed on his brain. He spent about a week or so on the A1 link ward, a sort of temporary fix apparently before they could decide what to do with him. He quickly deteriorated, physically dishevelled and confused, and the nurses were pretty useless in helping him or family members to understand what was going on. On more than one occasion he told me about the attitude of a number of the nurses, uncaring, unhelpful and abrupt with patients including him.

My grandfather is not your typical retired octogenarian who takes life easy. He remains incredibly active, politically involved in the party and socially busy with family and organisations. He retired from serving as a County Councillor in 2004 when he was approaching 80 years of age having spent a total of 22 years on both the City & County Council; some years before that he was the city’s Deputy Lord Mayor.

And yet for a period of a week in UHW he had to tolerate the indignity of his treatment. I use this as an example of why this review by Ruth Marks is so important, and why it is right to ensure that the “caring professions” really know how to care.